Dyspeptic retired Marine wife/tech wench attempts to enlighten the great unwashed of the blogosphere while dodging snarky commentary from the local knavery.

April 13, 2009

A Teachable Moment

Rebecca Chapman teaches a daily economics lesson to her fourth-graders at a public elementary school near Houston. She assigns them jobs -- pencil guard, errand runner, class sheriff. She lets them run small businesses -- cubby cleaning, baked goods -- and make purchases with fake money. She even taxes the profits.

On March 25, the lesson was a little different. She turned that day to the issue that had captivated and infuriated Americans: the millions in retention bonuses paid to employees at AIG Financial Products, the unit whose risky deals had wrecked giant insurer American International Group.

Chapman stood before her students and stoked the populism in their young souls. Pretend you are taxpayers, she said. Now, think about AIG paying bonuses even after the government had committed $180 billion to bailing it out.

"Can you believe it?" she asked.

The children hissed and moaned, sounding much like the elected officials and talking heads who had been eager to out-outrage one another.

"I got them all riled up," said Chapman, 29.

Then she turned the tables.

"What if you were an AIG employee?" she asked. Imagine if you had not been involved in the deals that ruined the company but were left to clean up the mess. What if you had to pay back money you felt you had earned? What if your family had received death threats?

One boy raised his hand.

"Can we write them and let them know that it's going to be okay?" asked the boy...